Putin’s Crimean History Lesson

President Vladimir Putin’s defiant speech in Moscow on Tuesday, which he followed up by signing a draft treaty to make the Crimea part of Russia, can be interpreted in two ways. The optimistic reading is that the Russian leader’s revanchism, and his railing against the West, is, essentially, an acknowledgement of his country’s weakness, and of the reduced circumstances in which it finds itself two decades after the collapse of Communism. The pessimistic view is that the effective annexation of Crimea marks the beginning of something new and ominous: not another Cold War but, rather, a revival of a chauvinistic and expansive Russian nationalism that goes back to the tsars.

Arguments can be made for both interpretations, and, whichever one is correct, Putin’s military démarche demands a stronger response than the pitiful set of sanctions that the United States and the European Union introduced on Monday. It’s small wonder that the Moscow stock market jumped after the sanctions were announced, and that many Russian officials laughed them off. The White House’s measures, which mostly involve freezing assets held overseas by eleven Russian and Ukrainian officials, and denying them visas, were aimed at people who, as far as we can tell, don’t have significant foreign property or bank accounts. The Russians who are busy buying up houses in Kensington and apartments overlooking Central Park—the oligarchs close to Putin—were excluded from the list of targets, as was Putin himself.

It’s worth parsing the speech, which Putin delivered to an audience of politicians, government officials, and other notables in the ornate St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace. Even now, the Russian leader is sometimes dismissed in the West as an ex-K.G.B. thug. He certainly has despotic tendencies. But he’s also a sophisticated political operator who presents a well-articulated account of Russian history, which resonates with many of his countrymen and countrywomen. In his telling, the annexation of Crimea is merely the righting of past wrongs—the wrongs not only of Western countries but also of the Communist regime, of which he used to be part.

“In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia,” Putin began. “This firm conviction is based on truth and justice, and was passed from generation to generation, over time, under any circumstances, despite all the dramatic changes our country went through during the entire twentieth century.” He continued:

After the revolution, the Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons—may God judge them—added large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic makeup of the population, and today these areas form the southeast of Ukraine. Then, in 1954, a decision was made to transfer the Crimean region to Ukraine, along with Sevastopol, despite the fact that it was a city of union subordination. This was the personal initiative of the Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev. What stood behind this decision of his—a desire to win the support of the Ukrainian political establishment or to atone for the mass repressions of the nineteen-thirties in Ukraine—is for historians to figure out …

Naturally, in a totalitarian state nobody bothered to ask the citizens of Crimea and Sevastopol. They were faced with the fact. People, of course, wondered why, all of a sudden, Crimea became part of Ukraine. But, on the whole—and we must state this clearly, we all know it—this decision was treated as a formality of sorts, because the territory was transferred within the boundaries of a single state. Back then, it was impossible to imagine that Ukraine and Russia may split up and become two separate states…. Unfortunately, what seemed impossible became a reality. The U.S.S.R. fell apart.

It was only when Crimea ended up as part of a different country that Russia realized that it was not simply robbed, it was plundered.

At least as regards Crimea, and give or take a few rhetorical flourishes and judgments, this is a roughly accurate representation of what happened, or, at least, of what recent history felt like to many Russians. (It felt quite different to the Crimean Tatars.) Thus the strong public support for Putin’s actions. To some in the West, and to certain liberal Russians, such as Garry Kasparov, this looks eerily like Hitler’s grab of the Czech Sudetenland in 1938. Most Russians, and even Mikhail Gorbachev, beg to differ. Crimea’s return to Russia “should be welcomed and not met with the announcement of sanctions,” the former Soviet leader said in a statement that was released on Monday. “If until now Crimea had been joined to Ukraine because of Soviet laws that were taken without asking the people, then now the people have decided to rectify this error.”

Putin’s defenders are skating over the fact that Russia has violated Ukraine’s sovereignty; stomped on international commitments it made during the nineties; destabilized the eastern part of Ukraine by shipping in agitators; and even, quite possibly, broken its own laws, which stipulate that new lands can join the Russian Federation only after the country to which they used to belong has made an agreement with Moscow. For all these reasons, sanctions are justified. But there is still the strategic point. If Crimea’s status as part of Ukraine is regarded as an accident, or a blunder by Khrushchev, the sight of it rejoining Russia can be regarded as a tidying up of historical loose ends—a delayed but inevitable part of the redrawing of boundaries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Will Putin stop there? Or does this mark the unleashing of Russian nationalism—an effort not merely to consolidate but to strike out and reverse some of the losses of the past twenty-five years? Even Putin may not know the answer to these questions. In his speech, which ended to rousing cheers of “Russia, Russia,” he railed at the United States and other Western countries. “They cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts,” he said. “That’s the way it was with the expansion of NATO, in the east, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: ‘Well, this doesn’t involve you.’ ”

Putin doubtless believes, on some level, that the Baltic republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—belong back in the Russian orbit. But, since these countries are already members of the European Union and NATO, he knows this isn’t going to happen. The contested areas are Belarus and Ukraine, which Putin regards as members of the Russian clan. In his speech, he referred to Crimea as “the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptized. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilization, and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.” On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry indicated its willingness to negotiate about the future of Ukraine, but its terms were exacting: acceptance of the Crimean referendum, military neutrality, decentralization of power to Russian-speaking regions, and an official designation of Russian as the second language, alongside Ukrainian. Meanwhile, Russian “tourists” in Ukraine’s eastern cities continue to whip up trouble that could be used as a pretext for sending Russian troops across the nearby border.

For now, anyway, Putin will probably keep them where they are. As a big trading nation, with an increasingly cosmopolitan economic élite, Russia can’t afford to be ostracized from the international community in the manner of Iran or the Soviet Union after its invasion of Afghanistan. Logic and Putin’s own history suggest he will push the West as far as he can without causing real damage to Russia’s economy, but no further.

So how much leeway will the West give him? Despite all the transatlantic consultations that have taken place over the past few weeks, that remains to be determined. A White House statement noted that the President had signed an executive order authorizing future sanctions on the Russian arms industry “and any designated individual or entity that acts on behalf of, or that provides material or other support to, any senior Russian government official. … We stand ready to use these authorities in a direct and targeted fashion as events warrant.” After watching Putin’s performance at the Kremlin, it’s pretty clear that President Obama is going to have to invoke this authority. The toothless sanctions already imposed against a few of Putin’s political supporters haven’t changed the Kremlin’s calculus.